Home Office and Work and Pensions

Part of Bill Presented — Personal Care At Home Bill – in the House of Commons at 2:37 pm on 25 November 2009.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Alan Johnson Alan Johnson The Secretary of State for the Home Department 2:37, 25 November 2009

We have heard the views of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell reiterated in the form of a major policy announcement from the Opposition Benches. We can see what this country would have to look forward to under a Conservative Administration: an age of austerity, with foxhunting reintroduced for our recreation, and with marriage- [Interruption.] Yes, foxhunting and marriage. I am beginning to think the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell might be an undercover agent planted on the Opposition Benches-perhaps by Lord Mandelson-to disrupt and undermine the Conservative party. We all admired his independence when he went straight on to live television and announced how wrong his party was to employ General Dannatt as a defence adviser, but what if that was not another gaffe? What if the hon. Gentleman simply broke cover by forgetting in the heat of the moment what he was supposed to be doing?

Let me remind the House of the response of the Conservative leader-in-waiting, my cousin Boris, to this broken Britain mantra. He said:

"Someone the other day"- he was referring here to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell-

"compared London with Baltimore; absolute nonsense."

He also said on a separate occasion:

"If you believe the politicians"- he is referring here not to us on the Labour Benches, but to the Conservatives, and the hon. Gentleman in particular-

"we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness...you can see what piffle that is."

That is what my cousin Boris Johnson says, and I agree.